1. Field of the Related Art
The present disclosure relates to printing systems, and more particularly, to a method and system for grouping a plurality of MFDs based on performance criteria.
2. Background of the Related Art
In general, a multifunction device (MFD) operates as a plurality of different imaging devices, including, but not limited to, a printer, copier, fax machine, and/or scanner. In recent years the basic office copier has evolved into what can be referred to as a MFD. With digital technology, a machine with the basic outward appearance of a traditional copier can perform at least the additional functions of printing documents submitted in digital form over a network, sending and receiving messages via facsimile, recording hard-copy original images in digital form and sending the resulting data over a network, such as in electronic mail and/or recording hard-copy original images in digital form on a compact disc or equivalent medium.
In the area of digital printing and copying, there has been a growth in demand for MFDs. Such MFD devices may assume the form of an arrangement in which a single print engine (e.g., xerographic or thermal ink jet print engine) is coupled with a plurality of different image input devices (or “services”), with such devices being adapted to produce image related information for use by the printer or transmitted over a network. The image related information, in one example, could have its origin in video facsimile signals, microfilm, data processing information, light scanning platens for full size documents, aperture cards, and microfiche. MFDs provide a broader range of functionality than traditional single-function devices, such as dedicated printers, copiers, and scanners. As a result, because of their network transmission capabilities combined with their functionality, it would be useful to poll MFDs into one or more groups based on performance criteria.
Polling is an alternative method to interrupts by which the processor (CPU) may process device requests. A CPU may, for example, poll a network device to determine if there are any packets to be processed. Network appliances, including software-based switches, firewalls, proxy servers, and even first-tier web servers are increasingly making use of polled input/output (I/O) to actively coalesce interrupts, and increase overall system performance by reducing the latencies involved with context switching during interrupt handling.
However, polling can be an inefficient mechanism due to the unnecessary and continuous checking of device status when the rate of device activities such as network traffic is not relatively high. Additionally, polling can be detrimental to power consumption since it occurs constantly, whether there is work to do or not, thus preventing the system from ever entering a “sleep” state where appropriate instructions can be issued to conserve power spent by the CPU. Thus, polling can adversely affect power conservation and the average time to gather information from a plurality of MFDs.
Currently network management tools poll MFDs to get current status information. It is desirable to have the most current status information. However, this comes at an expense of a high amount of network traffic being generated. It is also desirable to obtain a current status on a large number of network devices. However, communication with some devices takes a larger amount of time and some devices fail to communicate at all. Proposed alternatives, such as registering for events on devices (e.g., SNMP traps), is not standardized, and generates excessive traffic on unwanted events.
Thus, in conventional systems, there is no method for grouping devices based on performance criteria. Instead, conventional polling systems have focused on polling network devices for status information in large groups by using a single maximum Timeout (TO) and Retry (RT) value for network communication. The request for status information typically requires many Object Identifier (OID) objects, which often results in multiple Communication Requests (CR) with the Network Device (ND). With a sufficiently large number of network devices, and with different types of devices, and different states (able to communicate or not) and varying network environments, the resulting communication varies enough so that the maximum timeout and retry values will always be exceeded for each communication request to all devices. As a result, this is an inefficient and time-consuming process.
Consequently, current systems lack the capability to effectively group devices based on performance criteria. The present disclosure is intended to overcome the drawbacks of other methods by providing for grouping a plurality of MFDs based on one or more specific performance criteria.